Launch of a new book written by Cliff Tait-Jamieson, published by Postfirebooks.

Before becoming a book, The Great Prince of the Forest is a 30-minute performative reading in which Cliff Tait-Jamieson shares with us their moonlit encounter with stags in the forests of the Lot Valley.

The book is structured as a romanticised (yet true) account of an expedition into the forest during the rutting season. The narrative entails animal science research and behavioural studies, as well as a poetic analysis of the character Bambi in the 1945 Disney adaptation.

Borrowing from the conventions of coming-of-age tales and children’s storybooks, The Great Prince of the Forest offers an exploration into the iconography of the stag in both contemporary and ancient Western European history, as well as the author's reflections on testosterone intake and the experience of gender transition towards a perceived ideal of “normative” masculinity.

Cliff Tait-Jamieson was born in 1996 in Aotearoa, New Zealand. They live and work in Marseille. They integrate drawing and writing in multimedia installations that examine contemporary Western relationships to death, fragility, territory and gender. In these installations, they propose performative readings that unfold as pedagogical presentations, intimate narratives, and animal-drag. Their research is inspired by the social sciences, pop culture and the more anecdotal forms of knowledge derived from their everyday relationships and experiences. The significance of place, identity and the role of the intimate in the socio-political are at the root of her storytelling practice.

Postfirebooks is an editorial design studio that produces and distributes artists' publications. Postfirebooks' publishing activity is close to a personal artistic practice and resonates with creative writing, multilingual projects, the spatiality of the book and its inclusive scope: books in space, books as space, and publishing as a form of care. Postfirebooks strives to extend editorial practice to new media as well as to a variety of creative and research fields where publication becomes a space for inclusion. Considering that the printed object and the reading experience are at the centre of production and exhibition models, Postfirebooks questions the status and roles of publishers, authors and distributors in these different systems.

Slitopia is the electronic music project of Sophie Sutherland and Evelyn Fletcher Jenkins (Lesbian Death Slutz from Hell). Hailing from Aotearoa, New Zealand, they are currently travelling in France and concocting tracks for the Montpellier crowd, who will be lucky enough to be present for the evening on 22 November. Their set is inspired by the stories in Cliff Tait-Jamieson's The Great Prince of the Forest. Expect ambient melodies and upbeat rhythms to get you grooving.

Photo credit: Thomas Ducrocq (The Great Prince of the Forest, Cliff Tait-Jamieson, Postfirebooks, 2024)